S

Rainer Gemulla

Oct 3, 2012

GIVING CONFERENCE

Teaser

Content

Details

The purpose of a conference talk is to whet appetite.

Talk

Tech Report

Paper

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The purpose of a talk…

Is not

• To flood the audience with every detail of your paper

• To convince the audience to not read your paper

• To be as incomprehensible as possible hoping to impress people

• To embarrass or punish you

• To get over with it

Is

• To whet appetite

• To demonstrate that your work is interesting and significant and that your paper is worth reading

• To be noticed by the community

• To discuss problems

• To practice giving talks

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PURPOSEPREPARATIONDELIVERYSUMMARY

Assembly of material

• Cannot present everything

• What should the audience remember?– Gather potential ideas

– Select important point(s)

– Drop the rest

• Create a script, tell a story– Context of your problem

– Minimum of details necessary for understanding

– Key points and results

– Conclusions and outlook5

Why is each part included?

Why at this position?

Explaining pagerank to your grandmother (V1)

• N pages + hyperlinks

• Create NxN matrix A

• Aij=0 if page j does not link to page i

• Aij=1/(#distinct links on page j) otherwise

• Add “small” constant α to every entry, then divide by (1+Nα)

• Pagerank of page i = i-th component in principal right eigenvector of A

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Explaining pagerank to your grandmother (V2)

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Text provides structure. Figures and examples help grasping ideas.

Legibility, simplicity, relevance

• Small fonts are hard to read

• Minimize Font variations

• Animated entry is fun… for kids

• Unnecessary animations distract

• Ornaments don’t add to your talk

• White background, black text is just fine

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Practice, practice, practice

• Prepare thoroughly (think early, slides later)

• Don’t write out, don’t memorize

• Rehearse alone

– Take timings (after 5, 10, 15, … minutes)

– Stand (no mirror, maybe tape/video)

• Rehearse before people

– Big favor prepare

– Encourage, take and work in feedback

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PURPOSEPREPARATIONDELIVERYSUMMARY

Be you

• You are nervous? That’s good!

– Shows you care

– Adrenaline helps

• No need to be funny

– Need to be certain that yourjoke is actually funny

– Don’t laugh at your own jokes

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Style

• Slow down (but do not go over time)

• Preview-do-review

• Do not diminish or suggest unimportance

– “I’m so nervous”

– “This is just another of our results”

• Do not show off

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Your algorithms

My algorithm

Incredibly large gap

Questions are good

1. Acknowledge (every) question

2. Repeat or clarify the question

3. Answer the question

– To the audience

– Do not bluff, be honest

– Take questions offline

4. Check back whether question has been answered

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PURPOSEPREPARATIONDELIVERYSUMMARY

Conference talk = teaser

Focus on key point(s) to be remembered

Legibility, simplicity, relevance

Being nervous is good

Practice, practice, practice

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Pointers

• Justin Zobel, Writing for Computer Science: The Art of Effective Communication, Springer 2004.

• http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm

• Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen, New Riders, 2008

• MPII’s presentation skills seminar

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